The Mountain and the Valley (28 page)

“Would you like a little snort?” Toby said.

“Sure,” David said.

He took a huge drink from Toby’s flask, but without Toby’s roguish attitude. To take a drink offered, to launch the rawest remark of all, to be the first to grasp the wild heifer by the horn, to bear a sudden blow or sudden pain incuriously and without pose … whatever the less imaginative did hesitantly, with a wink or cramped by thought: these were the things he did naturally, with no cramp of imagination at all.

Toby hummed “Some of These Days” as they drove down the hill below the church. He clowned and slapped the wheel with his palms, stealing an absorbent glance now and then at Anna. She sat gently satiate beside him and forbearingly amused. He seemed born to a car, as wings to air. He had a wonderfully clear voice. There wasn’t a mote in either the high notes or the low. David too sat relaxed, except for
knowing
that he was happy. He
knew
it was the good-news-shine of the gin that, lifting, tingling, stripped things of their limiting corporeality.

“Why don’t you sing too, Dave?” Anna said.

“Me sing?” But he
was
singing. He was saying the words in his head silently, taking the sound of Toby’s voice for his own.

Sometimes Toby and Anna would say something to each other in a more matter-of-fact voice than they used when their remarks were general. There’d be something about it curiously contractural of the space between them. Then he’d think of this being Anna, who had never talked to anyone but him like that. He’d feel a sudden definition of his own body, as if he were riding in the front seat alone. But when Toby would clown a little for his benefit; or when Anna would watch the rapport between him and Toby, regulating it, catalyzing it; or when they’d glance at him for reaction, as if nothing they’d ever shared were quite ratified without the sanction of his understanding, it was perfect.

The three in back didn’t seem to share in this flow. They sat forward in the seat, as if the car were about to slow down and let them out. They couldn’t quite seem to surrender inertia to the motion of the car. Their conversation wasn’t free from awareness of motion. They spoke only of things their eyes picked out of the landscape, in passing. When one in front would turn to include them in a remark they’d lean ahead too quickly, then relax too quickly, as if they had grasped at a line and lost it. There seemed to be a partition between the back seat and the front.

If David had been going to the top of the mountain with his family alone, their bond would have been the trip and the morning. It would have sheared away all separateness amongst
them. Or going with Toby and Anna alone, he could have shared
Toby’s
excitement: not that they were going to the top of the mountain, but that they were taking the
car
. Now, with all of them there together and the gin wearing off, he had to keep up a kind of balancing. He talked a little louder to cover any remark he felt coming from the back about the wisdom of taking the
car;
he wished that Toby wouldn’t talk so exclusively to him and Anna.

“How’s the study coming, Dave?” Anna asked.

“Oh, I don’t do much nowadays,” he said.

He wished she hadn’t brought that up. He felt sheepish. Study seemed a stifling thing, with Toby there; something that would reclassify him in Toby’s eyes.

“I wish you could go to college
this
year,” Anna said. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance, is there, even with the scholarship?”

“Are you going to college?” Toby asked.

“I dunno,” he said. He’d known he was going to college, since he was ten.

“What do you want to go to college for, Dave?” Toby said. Indulgently, but as if all that were needed was a little guidance, to put David straight. “Why don’t you come to Halifax and get a job with me? I left school, did you know? I couldn’t stick that old stuff.”

David felt the surge of defensiveness again. He’d go to college all right. He’d be a … a doctor, he thought suddenly. The best one in Halifax. Maybe the best one in Canada.

“Yeah?” he said to Toby. He spoke tolerantly, as if Toby’s comment didn’t merit serious attention. He turned to his father.

“Why didn’t you bring the axe, Father?” he said. “You and I could have stayed and
cut
the keel.”

Toby’s face fell. David felt the old hurting power. He could inflict retreat on him by witholding responsiveness where unresponsiveness was least expected.

He didn’t look at Anna. She’d sense what was behind his break with Toby, though Toby didn’t. Her face would look as if it had lost its footing. (Once the teacher had interrupted praise of her writing to scold him for laughing with Steve. When she’d turned to Anna again, Anna hadn’t known what face to put on.) She couldn’t bear it when he and Toby were at odds.

They were nicely onto the mountain road when the car struck a soft spot. The wheels began to spin.

“Are we stuck?” Martha said at once. “Are we stuck?”

“What’s the trouble?” Chris said.

(Oh, if they’d only keep quiet, David thought.)

“Do you want us to git out and give you a push?” Joseph said.

“Naw,” Toby said, “she’ll go through that all right.”

But the wheels buried themselves deeper and deeper.

“We’ll have to get out, dear,” Anna whispered.

“All right,” Toby said, sighing.

They got out. Joseph broke an armful of brush and packed it tight around the wheels. He went for another. Toby insisted they didn’t need any more. He raced the motor, but the rut went deeper and deeper. The others pushed, but the car wouldn’t budge. Anna put her small hand against the back of the car and pushed too.

“Don’t you get in the mud, Anna,” Martha said, “with your good clothes on.”

Toby got out.

“We shouldn’t have brought the car,” Martha whispered to Anna.

Anna didn’t reply. She edged off toward Toby.

Toby looked the thing over. “Ain’t that somethin!” he said to Dave. He gave him a tentatively-including grin. “I thought she’d go through that all right.”

“She’s in quite deep,” David said. His tone was one of pure statement.

“Joseph, you better go get the oxen,” Martha said.

“No, no,” Toby said. “We’ll work her out somehow—eh Dave?”

“We better let Dad get the oxen, dear,” Anna said.

He hesitated. “Okay then,” he said. “All right.” He was still unconvinced; but made concession to the sensible, as he always did, without rancour.

The sun was directly overhead.

“We might as well eat before you go, Joseph,” Martha said, “means we got the lunch with us.”

“Yes,” Anna said, “let’s.”

It was Joseph who located the clearing. In a manner of minutes he had a fire going just sufficient to boil the kettle.

David watched his chance to catch Anna alone. He’d planned to tell her about the quarrel with his father. He wanted to give her the locket which he’d thrust into his pocket that morning.

When they’d eaten, Toby stretched out in the clearing, to absorb the sun. Anna wandered off to look for woods flowers. David followed her.

He’d thought it would be easy, as soon as Anna sensed that he had something on his mind, to break into confidence. He waited, but she gave no sign of knowing he had anything to tell her. This was so unusual it put him off.

“Father and I hauled off the big rock one day,” he said at last.

“You did!” Anna said.

“I guess we were both tired out and cranky, and—”

“Oh Lord!” she exclaimed. “There goes my brand new stocking.” She smiled. “What did you say, Dave?”

He couldn’t go on. For a minute it seemed suddenly darker under the trees. He knew that time and separation had sealed them off from each other a little. Nothing like it did with others, but even with them, a little.

He pulled out the locket and passed it to her abruptly.

“Grandmother gave me this,” he said. “It’s no good to me.”

“What is it?” Anna said.

“A locket, that’s all I know. She was all sort of secret about it. There’s a picture inside.”

Anna opened the locket. She knew whose picture it must be. She started to tell David about Ellen and the sailor, but when she looked at him to speak, he said, “Did you ruin your stocking?” She didn’t sense that steady listening which had always been between them. She felt the sudden little darkness under the trees too.

“It looks like Toby,” was all she said.

Toby? David thought. It looks like me. Toby’s face and mine are entirely different: how could we both look like someone else?

They were standing silent when Toby appeared.

“What’s the secret?” he said. He gave David the unwithholding smile, trying, transparently to everyone but himself, to assault David’s withdrawal by sheer ingratiation.

“Did you have a sleep?” David said.

He might have been instigating conversation to accommodate a stranger. He saw a kind of pallor strike in Toby’s eyes. Their blue seemed to fluctuate with his feelings like the blue of water from depth to depth.

They heard the tinkle of bells then. Joseph and Chris had gone to fetch the oxen. Chris didn’t return.

When Joseph arrived, he prepared to hitch the log chain to the back of the car.

“No,” Toby said, “the front bumper. We’re going on, aren’t we?”

“Oh, Toby,” Anna said, “do you think …?”

“Let’s not try it any further,” Martha said. “Please. It makes me so nervous …”

(Ohhhhhhhhhh, David thought.)

“There’s nothing to be nervous about, Mrs. Canaan,” Toby said. “There aren’t any more soft spots, are there, Dave?”

“I don’t know,” David said.

He didn’t look at Anna. He knew she’d look as if she’d counted on
him
, anyway, not having to be so inexorably sensible with Toby’s whims.

“All right,” Toby said. “Hitch them on behind then.” He moved to pick up the chain.

“You’ll go over your shoes,” David said. “Let me.”

He took the chain himself. His old clothes gave him a sudden superiority then. Toby’s seemed futile and finicky.

For all David’s physics and Toby’s mastery of the engine as long as the going was smooth, it was Joseph who knew exactly where to place the bunk hook; exactly how to
extricate
the car from the rut.

On solid ground again, Toby turned the car with incredible dexterity. He was smiling again now, unreservedly. Having turned the car in the impossibly narrow road was the thing now.

“All aboard,” he called. “You going to sit in the middle again, Anna?”

“I guess I’ll come along with Father and the oxen,” David said.

Toby’s smile dropped down.

“Oh, Dave …” Anna said. “What for?”

“Oh, I dunno,” David said. “I guess I’ll come along with him.”

“You’ll wait at the house for supper, won’t you?” Martha said.

“No,” Anna said, “I don’t think we have time, Mum, really.
You’re
coming with us in the car, aren’t you?”

“I can’t dear,” ’ Martha said. “Honest. It makes me so nervous in the car on this road.”

“Well, it looks like we have to go alone, Toby,” Anna said. She made a last effort to resolve all their divergent moods with a single smile at them—a smile humouring everybody.

“Don’t forget to come again soon, eh, Toby?” David said. He made the words sound as if he were
trying
to make them sound genuine.

“Sure,” Toby said. “I mean, we will. Sure.”

Anna hesitated. Then she kissed them all around.

The actual moment of departure had set in. David felt the satisfaction of his deliberate offishness crumble all at once, because it had been in no way rebuked except by the involuntary look on their faces. He felt an awful penitence—as if somehow they must start the day all over again. He accused him
self
now for all that hadn’t gone quite right.

He started to say, “I guess I
will
go with you and Toby.” He looked at Toby. Toby was completely himself again. The going away was the thing with him now, exclusively.

“Good-bye, Anna,” David said.

Then the car was moving down the mountain and Toby was tooting the horn and Anna was waving her small hand. She was ignorant of his surge to be with them, irretrievable by his penitence. The sheen of the leaves had been fresh as waking
that morning. Now they were like the leaves in the old orchard that were seen only when you went there hunting. When it was time to go, they retreated into another time.

“Well, Dave,” Joseph said, “we’ll have to try her agin tomorrow.”

But the next day it rained. The day, much much later, when Joseph cut the keel, there was no one with him at all.

S
ometimes when the draining headache bled pallid everything he looked at, David would try to recapture the physical feel of that morning in 1935: the last morning he’d been unconscious of his flesh. Nothing would come clear except the weather and the circumstance. It must have been November, though he couldn’t remember the date. There was a feathery snow on the ground. The pig had left a dark stain of blood when they dragged it to the barn floor for scalding. It must have been late November, so the meat could be kept fresh for Christmas. But not so late that the men couldn’t scrape the bristles and riddle the fat from the intestines without their freezing.

Long after the incident of that day had ceased to be active in anyone else’s mind, he’d think: If Chris had been standing where Steve was standing, I mightn’t have heard him … If Chris himself had gone for the apple …

They didn’t really need David. Joseph had engaged Steve to help them, the night before. And when David went to borrow Ben Fancy’s .22, Ben offered to give them a hand also.

Ben was a spry stubby man, with a geniality you never spotted calculation in until afterwards. If he offered to help you with a casual job like this and you gave him a day’s ploughing in return, he had a way of seeming so truly indebted that you came away as if it were
he
who had done the favour. Steve had grown thick and quiet. His maleness seemed to give a darkness to his flesh and a cast of heat to the whites of his eyes.